Chick-fil-A Chocolate Chunk Cookie

Home reconstruction

The thing that makes this cookie different from every other chocolate chip cookie is not a secret and it is not a technique. There are oats in it. Chick-fil-A list wholegrain oats on their published ingredient information, and once you know that, the texture makes sense.

That chewy, slightly dense, almost oatmeal-cookie bite is what oats do. Leave them out and you have made a perfectly good chocolate chip cookie that is not this one.

What the oats change

They absorb liquid slowly. Oats take up moisture over minutes rather than seconds, which is why the dough stiffens as it sits and why the baked cookie stays chewy for days rather than going hard overnight.

They interrupt gluten. Flakes physically get in the way of the flour forming a continuous structure, so the crumb is shorter and more tender.

They add almost no sweetness. So the sugar has to come up slightly to keep the balance.

Use rolled oats, not instant and not steel-cut. Instant oats are cut too fine and turn to paste. Steel-cut never soften at all and stay gritty.

Chunks, not chips

Chocolate chips are made with less cocoa butter than bar chocolate, on purpose, so they hold their shape in the oven. That is useful for a chip cookie and wrong for this one.

Chop a bar instead. You get pools and streaks of melted chocolate through the cookie rather than discrete pellets, plus the dust from chopping, which tints the dough. Both dark and milk chocolate, roughly half and half, gets closest.

What you need

• 225 g unsalted butter, softened
• 200 g dark brown sugar
• 100 g granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 250 g plain flour
• 100 g rolled oats
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp fine salt
• 200 g dark chocolate, chopped into chunks
• 150 g milk chocolate, chopped into chunks

Method

1. Oven to 175°C. Line two trays.
2. Cream the butter and both sugars for 2 minutes only. Longer whips in air that makes the cookie cakey instead of chewy.
3. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla.
4. Whisk the flour, oats, bicarbonate and salt together in a separate bowl.
5. Add the dry to the wet on the lowest speed and **stop the moment the streaks disappear.**
6. Fold in both chocolates by hand.
7. Rest the dough 30 minutes at room temperature. This is the oat hydration step and it is the one that matters.
8. Scoop generous tablespoons, spaced well apart.
9. Bake 12–14 minutes, until the edges are set and the middles still look underdone.
10. Leave on the tray 5 minutes before moving.

The dark brown sugar

Dark brown rather than light. The extra molasses brings acidity, which reacts with the bicarbonate for lift, and it brings moisture, which keeps the cookie chewy. It also gives the deeper colour these have.

Substituting light brown sugar makes a paler, slightly crisper, less interesting cookie.

Storing

Five days in an airtight tin, and they stay chewy longer than a standard chocolate chip cookie because of the oats.

The dough freezes well scooped into balls. Bake from frozen, adding two minutes.